What Utah Business has to say about "The hot business of cold plunges"

Utah Business "highlights the ideas, innovations and people behind Utah's business success stories".

In their October 2025 issue, Heather Bergeson, shares the backstory and vision behind PLUNJ.

"In 2017, while training for an ultramarathon, Sean Foster would end his long runs with a stop at the Provo River. In the brisk 52-55 degree water, he found a ritual that he says noticeably sped his muscle recovery, giving him an essential edge for his grueling training schedule. Not only was he seeing the positive effects physically, but after a few weeks, his wife, Lauren Foster, remarked that Foster’s stress and anxiety had noticeably improved. This, they soon discovered, was a benefit linked to the cold plunges. Foster was intrigued by the results he was seeing in his own body, and personal research led him to the Finnish ritual of sauna and cold plunge, also referred to as contrast therapy. “That got me very intrigued, because that was the first time I had heard of using a sauna in conjunction with the cold water,” he says. “We started trying to look for different ways to utilize a sauna, but we really didn’t have access to one.” After discovering a friend of theirs had a sauna, Foster and Lauren tried their own DIY contrast therapy, where they would sit in the sauna and then spray each other off with a garden hose. “It was euphoric,” says Foster. “I went home that night, and I was like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to figure this out. We really need to have something for us.’” “All these little things kind of coalesced into our desire to try and make this more accessible for people,” says Foster.

Read the full story, and see the photography provided by your's truly PLUNJ Salt Lake, in Utah Business October magazine, or online.

If you're new to PLUNJ, contrast therapy, or batthouse culture, learn more on what your first visit would be like here.